A Chance Meeting
by MSCSIFANGSR
Summary: Set years post episode 9x10. GSR. A chance meeting in a cafe brings two people together.


TITLE: A Chance Meeting  
AUTHOR: Chauncey10 aka MSCSIFANGSR  
PAIRING: Sidle-Grissom and OOC's.  
RATING: PG-13  
SUMMARY: I'm on the bandwagon, too. Set years post-episode 9x10.  
DISCLAIMER: I'm just playing with them.  
SPOILERS: Every show aired in U.S.  
BETA: LosingInTranslation

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Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fall 2036.

Harlan Wilson stared to off to the right, admiring the view of the barista who was bent over a small café table wiping it ever so slowly with a rag. Her figure was like an hourglass in an era when stick figures seemed to be the norm. Skinny was not his ideal, not by a long shot. But the woman before him was beautiful.

He'd noticed her earlier as she prepared another customer's order when he came into the popular coffee shop near the university. He was an infrequent customer, but couldn't recall ever seeing her before today.

Harlan watched as she held the clear bottle of cleanser over the table, sprayed, and then wiped the table in concentric circles. She pulled a dry towel from the back pocket of her uniform pants and he studied it carefully. He could just make out the pictures of the tiny coffee cups in various of colors of the rainbow on the dry towel she now applied to the table.

Her butt was framed perfectly in those khakis and he could easily tell there were no panty lines. He watched her almost obsessively. Watching her body sway as if it were dancing to a rhythm only she could hear.

The pile of papers lying out before him was far more important in the grand scheme of in his life. But the woman's movements were hypnotic, and he was truly spellbound. She swiped; she shifting her weight, and leaning farther over the table. She flipped the cloth over and wiped a little harder over a particular heavily soiled area.

Many thoughts processed through his mind as he watched the twenty-something woman perform her job duties:

_Is this the mother of my children?  
She reminds me of someone.  
My, my, my. Look at that girl shake that thing.  
I really need to get back to this paperwork, because the rest of my life depends on whether or not I get this grant.  
Insert Tab A into Slot B and form a tight bond between the two._

The statuesque woman suddenly straightened her posture, turned, looked met into his eyes then brazenly gave him a wink.

_Oh, no. She did not._

Wilson thought he was seriously bordering on having a coronary with the way his heart seemed to be pounding out of his chest. He couldn't quite catch his breath.

The pencil he was holding in his left hand fell to the floor with a clatter. He clumsily leaned over and reached down for the classic yellow number two, that still haunted his memories from childhood achievement tests. He was sure he had spoiled any chance for appearing suave and debonair to the brunette.

Harlan didn't look back at her, embarrassed as he was, so he spent several moments of shuffling the pages of his grant proposal. These few minutes seconds were pure torture. How could he not want to look at the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life?. He just wanted one more look.

He took a deep breath and attempted to calm his nerves. He knew he needed to get back to the necessary job at hand, but the thought of the waitress in more intimate places overtook his reasoning. The thought of the two of them, together, pleased him in more ways than applying for a grant to allow him to continue his studies pertaining to the entomological and ecological aspects of the life of an Ichneumon wasp never could.

Taking another deep breath, and he chanced a subtle glance upward, only to find to see she was her still standing beside the same table as she had been prior to the pencil incident. Wilson's glance was cut short, he immediately let brought his gaze rest upon back to the top sheet of his paperwork. The words on the page were began to blur and perhaps transform into another language, because for some reason he could not read his own handwriting.

He could felt himself blushing under her watchful eyes. He could feel a laser laser-like beam burn into his face as she continued to looked at him.

"Dr. Harlan Wilson?"

_Oh no. She's one of my students or a former student.  
Crap.  
Crap.  
Crap._

"Yes," he weakly replied.

"I'm Alaia Grissom. You don't recognize me, do you?" Her laughter managed to camouflage any hints of embarrassment he may have had in response to her question.

"Of course! I knew you looked familiar," his voice softened. Then he stood up, straightened his posture and walked the few steps over to her. He wanted to take her hand and shake it in greeting, but she took the opportunity to quickly embrace him and place a soft kiss on his cheek, just below his left ear.

Harlan was speechless. Only moments ago, he'd been fantasizing about this woman, now she was in his arms, kissing him. He let her hug him tighter against her warm, welcoming body.

"Of course, I remember you." He tried to get his composure back. "I recall being coerced into helping your mom with one of your birthday parties. How long ago was that?"

"That was my tenth birthday, so 15 years ago," she spoke in a sad, almost wistful tone. "We lost dad that next year."

"I remember. He was a good man. Dr. Grissom was by far the best friend and teacher I could have ever asked for." She was the daughter of the man he had idolized. Gil Grissom was a legend in entomology. The man had authored many books and articles that even now were the definitive texts in the field of entomology.

Alaia's nod, affirmed his statement.

Harlan attempted to catch his breath when he realized Alaia was staring straight into his soul with her chocolate brown eyes.

_Those dark brown eyes, gazing at me, so hungry, pleading for my kisses.  
It's Grissom's daughter, don't think about her like that.  
Think of something else.  
Anything._

Grissom had managed to get as far away in miles, as in he did in spirit, from the city of Las Vegas and the life he left behind. Serving as an associate professor in the science department at Mississippi State University, he became the head of Entomology and Plant Pathology division. Harlan had been a 23 year old graduate student then, who served as Grissom's teaching assistant. But he had done just about anything Gil Grissom had ever asked of him to do, including washing his car, doing his research, grading papers and even baby-sitting the Grissom's children.

"How is your mother?" Harlan remembered the fireball that had married a man fourteen yearsher senior. Sara Sidle-Grissom had been an instructor in Physics and Astronomy, but the role she preferred above all else the job title wife and mother.

Sara had been a student herself when she'd first met the esteemed entomologist. The couple had worked together for years as crime scene investigators, but their affair and subsequent marriage had surprised many in their field. None of their co-workers suspected their involvement until a deranged killer took Sara hostage.

Harlan remembered the two regaling him with many unbelievable stories of crimes they had investigated, but he was always much more interested in Grissom's digressions into the entomology of the over 1200 species of butterflies in Costa Rica in among which the legend had discovered a new species in 2009, _Alaia Parides Childrenae. _A beautiful dark, elusive butterfly in which Harlan had developed a fascination.

"I'm afraid, she passed away this last winter; ovarian cancer." Alaia seemed so calm and self assured as she relayed the sad news.

"I didn't know. I'm so sorry for your loss." And Harlan dearly meant it.

Sara was someone he would never forget. She had grit and more moxie than anyone he'd ever met. Alaia looked just like her mother in the face, and even had the same gap between her two front teeth. But there was little doubt to anyone who'd ever met Gil Grissom, when it came to the paternity of the children; Alaia was her father made over.

She accepted his condolences with another nod.

Her voice was steady when she asked, "Did you know that I had a crush on you back then, when you were our dreaded baby-sitter?"

It wasn't everyday Harlan Wilson had a woman tell him that they'd had a crush on him. The brunette was much younger than he could ever remember being and it was a heady feeling.

He scrunched up his mouth, and then exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "No." He was suddenly struck by an image, long forgotten, of the 10 year old little girl, hugging the man who had given her a silver charm bracelet with decorated with tiny beetles, bees and lady bugs. And Harlan suddenly felt very old.

"Well, I did, and if I may be so forward, …I think I still do, Professor." She winked at him again. "You were the cute back then, but now you're more handsome than some of those guys that come in here from the theatre department."

Suffice it to say, the tightness that shooting through his chest was not an early warning for a heart attack. But he didn't know that at the time. His balance had left him suddenly and he was about to fall, when Alaia grabbed one of the fake black wrought-iron chairs and pushed him unceremoniously into it.

No heart attack. He was hyperventilating.

The sound of her voice broke through his panic attack, "Do you need a bag? You know, to breathe in?"

He shook his head in the affirmative.

The lovely young woman that he'd known first met as a little girl, and was now meeting again for what felt like the first time, ran off toward the counter where earlier he'd purchased a tall decaffeinated Earl Grey from another barista.

When she returned with a brown paper sack bearing the name of the coffee shop, she handed it to him, wordlessly.

He took several deep breaths with his mouth blowing in and out in slow succession. His panic attack abated, finally.

Alaia, in the meantime, had squatted down between his knees, letting her hands rest gently against atop his thighs, as her hands splayed out over the fabric of his jeans.

As Harlan shyly handed the bag back to her, Alaia quickly shook her head.

"Keep it… You might need that again." She smiled wide and then said, " I'm about to ask you out to dinner."

Harlan barely noticed the pages of now completely forgotten grant proposal or the long neglected cold cup of tea sitting on the table as he placed the bag back over his mouth.

So much for the rest of his life.

THE END

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Reviews are appreciated...:)


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